If you’re looking for a great experience to entertain clients, supporters, staff and partners then a day at the races is definitely something to be considered.

Whether you’re into betting and the horses — or not — a day at the races offers something for everyone. Racing clubs are not just in the business of horse racing, they’re in the business of hospitality with most race courses offering a number of venues and experiences to suit all comers.

Some venues at the track can cater for a crowd of a couple of hundred or down to smaller groups and can do stand-up catering or sit down, depending upon the sort of function you’d like to have.

The horse racing can be great background entertainment or central to the day, the venues can tailor to suit, or you can look for an event manager to tie it all together and facilitate the type of experience required.

Doomben Racecourse in Brisbane was the venue for the day where Cory Johnston took out naming rights sponsorship for the nine-event race card. This was a great platform for them to leverage the day through television signage exposure and at the racecourse.

120 guests were entertained with Brisbane Racing Club’s hospitality team looking after the guests superbly in a private room and trackside experiences offered to guests including rail access to the starting gates and opportunities to watch a race from the race caller’s room, with a view of the action not to be missed.

Experienced MC and race day host Mark Forbes of Game On International was engaged to facilitate the formal proceedings and entertain guests. Event photography was provided by EV Photo – if you’re going to the expense and trouble to organise a significant event then make sure it is covered properly by a professional photographer. The results are priceless.

Racing clubs are not just in the business of horse racing, they’re in the business of hospitality

Meat and agri-products trader Cory Johnston is celebrating its 50th year of operation in 2018 and is confident about its future after a decade where turnover has doubled in size through a strong commitment to customers and a diversification of its product range.

Specialising in sourcing and supplying an extensive range of protein-based produce: chilled and frozen meats, grains, pulses, oil seeds, and various vegetable and animal protein meals, Cory Johnston is targeting the food service industry, smallgoods manufacturers and opportunities for growth through its grain and meals division.

Cory Johnston director Peter Shearer said domestic meat trading had been the main foundation of the business but that the company was looking at opportunities in new markets.

“International trade is expanding for us and we’re looking at new markets including in Latin America and Europe,” Shearer said.

Shearer said that grain and associated products, whilst making up about a quarter of the business, would look to expand as the company invests more resources into that part of the business.

He said that a focus on the supply of food products in the community was centred on quality and sustainable operations.

“People are becoming a lot more concerned about where their food comes from,” Shearer said. “We work closely with suppliers to get the right quality products to the right sections of the market.”

Cory Johnston was formed in 1968 after frozen beef retrieved from a distressed cargo ship – which had caught fire off the Queensland coast – needed to be sold in the domestic market on behalf of the insurance company. This opportunity lead to Douglas Cory and the late Don Johnston forming a partnership which lead to the creation of Cory Johnston Pty Ltd later that year.

The continued growth in business, as well as astute investments, allowed Doug Cory to diversify into cold storage which led to the establishment of the Doboy Coldstores in 1976.

Late in 1987, Doug decided to purchase Don Johnston’s share in the business. This resulted in Cory Johnston (NSW) which operated together with Cory Johnston for the next eight years. After that time the Cory Johnston (NSW) office was (by mutual agreement) divested.

In 2001, Doug decided to step back from his commitments and negotiated the sale of Cory Johnston to younger brother Trevor and long-time employee Peter Shearer. Under the direction of Trevor and Peter, the business has continued to diversify and prosper. In early 2012, Cory Johnston moved from its home of 26 years at Doboy Coldstores to new offices in the Metroplex Development at Murarrie.

Trevor Cory will be retiring from the business in 2019 and attributes much of the success of Cory Johnston to its staff and their market knowledge.

“Knowing what our clients need and making sure that need is filled coupled with our financial reliability has been the cornerstone to our longevity and in building successful relationships,” Cory said.

“We see opportunities to build the by-products part of the business, such as tallow, poultry oil and feather meal and to increase supply to stock feed manufacturers.

“Whilst I’m looking forward to retirement, the business is in very good hands with opportunities in the near term for continued expansion.”

When State Street Global Advisors wanted to make a statement about boardroom diversity in companies around the world, they settled on a PR ‘stunt’ that captured public attention and ensured millions of dollars in publicity for their company and their cause.

What they didn’t bargain on was themselves being subject to action for a gender-related issue with their own employees to take the gloss off what was a well-executed installation.

The bronze statue ‘Fearless Girl’, with hands on hips in a defiant pose, was commissioned and installed near Wall Street in front of the famous Charging Bull statute which itself was commissioned following the stock market crash of 1987 to signal the American people’s strength and power.

Fearless Girl was originally installed on Wall Street on the eve of International Women’s Day 2017, accompanied by a call on the companies in which State Street Global Advisors invests to increase the number of women on their corporate boards.

Since that day, State Street – which has assets under management of nearly $3 trillion — has focused on more than 700 publicly-traded companies without a single woman on their board. Among those companies, 152 have since added a female director to their board and another 34 companies have pledged to do so. The firm has also voted against more than 500 companies that failed to take action.

The statue dominated social media from its launch, garnering more than one billion Twitter impressions in the first 12 hours, eventually reaching 4.6 billion impressions and 745 million Instagram impressions over 12 weeks. Millions of dollars in news media value has also been generated.

The statue and campaign has been successful in sending a strong diversity call into boardrooms not just in the US but around the world. She is soon to be relocated to Wall Street, opposite the New York Stock Exchange.

What wasn’t factored into the campaign was action against the company itself discriminating against hundreds of female executives by paying them less than male colleagues, according to US regulators.

In late 2017, the company announced it was paying $5 million to settle charges that it underpaid about 300 of its own female employees. Whilst it has disputed the findings of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programmes relating to salaries back in 2010-11, it decided to cooperate and settle in order to bring about a resolution.

The irony in the timing of the settlement of the charges was not lost on many as it occurred while Fearless Girl was still gathering massive attention for its gender-equity goal.

It shows that despite the best intentions, such a high-profile marketing ploy ensured intense scrutiny of the company and its own operations and would have caused many red faces at the Boston-based financier.

A post shared by Uwentigo (@uwentigo_travel) on Jul 14, 2018 at 12:00pm PDT

“We feel comfortable that the issue of gender diversity within our own company is an area where we are very committed,” State Street Global Advisors vice-president of marketing communications and global marketing Liz Serotte, who was part of the team who created the Fearless Girl campaign, told The Australian Financial Review.

“We’ve made steady progress and we can point to a lot of the advances that we’ve made in the past five years or so in hiring women at executive levels, [and] promotions of women at executive levels.”

Fearless Girl also was met with criticism from the American-Italian artist who created Charging Bull, which has stood south of Wall Street for nearly 30 years, alleging that Fearless Girl breached his copyright and distorted his artistic message and vowed to sue.

The report includes a benchmarking study that compares tickets purchased from FCTG’s corporate and retail businesses in 2017 compared to 2016 and 2015 airfares.

Felicity Burke, General Manager of 4D, said the ticket increases the business had witnessed during the year in the domestic space had been driven by strong consumer demand, steady tourism growth and gradual increases in carrier published fares.

“Both Qantas Airways and Virgin Australia increased their published airfares during the year, with the largest percentage increases on the economy class restricted airfares,” Felicity said. “The carrier-driven increases have pushed the cheaper ‘leisure traveller’ airfares upwards to the range of 2.5% to 8%. Also noted are business class fare increases of between 2% to 8% and economy class flexible fares 2% to 7% during 2017.”

Felicity said the positive news was that international economy fares for corporates had remained flat in 2017 and leisure travellers had another year of excellent value, low-priced long-haul fares.

With approximately 62 airlines now servicing the international landscape, Felicity said Australian travellers continued to be ‘spoilt for choice with carriers, flight frequencies and in-flight product’.

FCTG Managing Director, Graham Turner, said the golden era of travel continued to shine brightly for travellers.

“Competitive international airfares, new direct flights such as the Perth to London, more frequent services, continually improved in-flight amenities plus unprecedented discounting on some routes are but a few of the positive takeaways from 2017,” Mr Turner said.

“If the price of oil continues to rise this could potentially mean ticket prices may increase in the near term. But we’re still going to see some excellent value across the international and domestic landscape as airlines compete for both the corporate and leisure dollar.”

Qantas’ recent start of non-stop services between Perth and London is the first of new city pairs to be offered by the airline as it welcomes new long-range aircraft to its fleet. Qantas is also targeting ultra-long haul flights from the east coast of Australia to London and New York by 2022.

John Simeone, Qantas’ Head of Business and Government Sales, said in the report, ‘We’re seeing growth across all markets including the resources sector and the arrival of new aircraft allows us the chance to open new routes, just like Perth-London’.

The report indicated that Virgin Australia continued to focus on its guests’ travel experience rolling out wi-fi across the majority of its fleet, introducing Melbourne to Hong Kong flights in 2017 and commencing Sydney to Hong Kong services in July this year.

Felicity said the increase in in-bound visitors and domestic tourism, had also impacted the availability of domestic seats with load factors reaching nearly 80% in 2017.

“The demand for domestic seats in the leisure space was very strong last year, which has also affected ticket prices,” she said.

The 4D report indicated a 2.5% and a 4.6% increase for corporate and leisure domestic fares during the next 18 months provided the carrier mix remained the same along with a positive outlook for the domestic economy.

Additionally four key industry themes have been highlighted for the year ahead:

The third SCA Unlisted Retail Fund, SURF 3, seeks to raise $35 million to help acquire a $57.9 million portfolio of neighbourhood shopping centres in Moama and Swansea in New South Wales, Woodford in Queensland and Warrnambool in Victoria. The opportunity to invest is open to both retail and wholesale investors.

The Moama Marketplace, Swansea Woolworths and Woodford Village properties are anchored by a Woolworths supermarket and Warrnambool by Target. Moama is also anchored by a Woolworths petrol outlet.

The fund income is primarily from the anchor tenants with 71% of income from Woolworths Limited and Target Australia. The specialty tenants are primarily non-discretionary focused including medical centres, pharmacies and food-based tenancies.

The fund has a weighted average lease expiry over 10 years and is forecasting an attractive initial distribution yield of 7.1 per cent. The fund term is 6.5 years and approximately 30 per cent of distributions are expected to be tax deferred. It is an unlisted closed end property unit trust registered as a managed investment scheme with a minimum investment of $25,000.

SURF Fund Manager Melissa Kingham said, “Already we have over 50% registered interest from SMSF trustees who are looking for long average lease expiries and stable distributions.”

SCA engaged Australia’s leading economic location advisory firm Location IQ to undertake a demographic review of each of the assets. The research found the main trade area for all locations was growing and primarily comprised couples with dependants. The populations are typically strongly associated with the local convenience shopping facilities.

Location IQ also found the Warrnambool Target had a trade area population of more than 95,000, nearly double the typical trade area population for a discount department store-anchored shopping centre of 50,000 people.

SURF 3 Fund Manager Melissa Kingham said the research gave SCA confidence that each of the assets was well positioned to deliver on the targeted distribution rate.

“All four assets are surrounded by populations that, demographically speaking, are pre-disposed to visit their local shops for groceries and other essentials,” she said.

SURF 3 Portfolio Overview*

Property

WALE (years)

GLA (sqm)

Anchor Tenant

Valuation

Moama Marketplace, NSW

14.39

4,514

Woolworths

$14 million

Swansea Woolworths, NSW

15.76

3,677

Woolworths

$15.3 million

Warrnambool Target, Vic

5.82

6,983

Target

$16 million

Woodford Woolworths, QLD

8.39

3,668

Woolworths

$12.6 million

TOTAL

10.3

18,842

$57.9 million

*As at valuation date of 31 March 2018

SCA Property Group Chief Executive Officer Anthony Mellowes said the SURF series had proven extremely popular with retail investors seeking exposure to convenience-based shopping centre assets, underpinned by the security of long leases to anchor tenants.

“Both the SURF 1 and SURF 2 offerings are now closed and investors are happy with their quarterly distributions,” he said. “Each of the assets has a strong lease profile, quality tenant base and together provide broad geographic diversity.

“SCA will manage the assets on behalf of the fund and will co-invest a minimum of 20% of the amount to be raised.”

The SURF 1 and SURF 2 unlisted property funds have delivered unitholders annual returns more than 8% and 7% respectively since being launched in October 2015 and June 2017.

SURF 3 was independently reviewed by Core Property Fund Research and Ratings and ‘recommended’ for investment.

Managing Director of Core Property Dinesh Pillutla commented that the interest for direct property investment was due to predictable income distributions with potential for capital growth. SMSF investors are also looking for regular distributions with tax deferral benefits.

The properties are currently owned by SCA Property Group and will be acquired on an arm’s length basis following an independent valuation carried out by JLL of $57.9 million with a weighted average capitalisation rate of 6.92%.

SCA utilises the SURF structure to provide existing unitholders and other investors with an opportunity to invest in assets that are non-core to the Group’s future strategy. The SURF 3 portfolio takes to 11 the total number of properties that have been syndicated in this way.

The SURF 3 portfolio has a total Gross Lettable Area of 18,842 square metres and Total Site Area including car parking of 44,822 square metres.

SCA Property Group owned and/or managed over $2.5 billion of retail properties in Australia as at end December 2017. SCA announced Funds From Operations (FFO) of $56.1 million for the six months to 31 December, 2017, up 4.9% on the same period last year.

FCTG today is announcing the Australian arrival of Sam at the btTB GBTA conference in Sydney. The award-winning mobile travel assistant app has been developed by the group’s innovation lab in Europe.

Employing a blend of AI (artificial intelligence) and integrated travel consultant support, Sam overlays the most important features that a business traveller needs with the experience that a leisure traveller enjoys.

Sam is now available for clients of FCTG brands FCM Travel Solutions and academic travel provider Campus Travel. FCTG’s SME business travel specialist Corporate Traveller and entertainment and sports travel brand Stage and Screen, will make Sam available for clients, second half of 2018.

FCTG’s corporate division executive general manager, James Kavanagh, said today’s launch was an exciting milestone for the Australian business travel community following the launch of Sam in the UK and the USA in 2017.

“By downloading Sam, our customers won’t miss a thing,” Mr Kavanagh said. “Sam’s messages are intuitive, helpful and include practical information and advice that is based on context, relevance and a traveller’s personal preferences.”

Mr Kavanagh said Sam fulfilled the necessary travel management functions, but went a step further by tracking a traveller’s location, providing real-time information for traffic and flight delays, and featured interactive city guides, weather updates and gate changes.

“Sam will even give you information about what carousel your luggage is on and allows you to book an Uber ride within the app,” Mr Kavanagh said. “Plus, some of the new functionality that’s on its way, is a perfect example of how AI is redefining the travel management space.”

“Across the USA and UK FCM has travellers from more than 80 national and multi-national companies currently using Sam. A recent survey of our USA clients who had downloaded the app, included comments from customers who were loving the ‘automated weather and traffic’ alerts and many praising the real time updates following the recent storms across the US East Coast.”

Sam Also Brings The World’s First ‘Chatbot Assisted Community’

As part of FCTG’s announcement, customers will also be shown the new ‘Community’ functionality – which is a first for the Australian and global business travel industry.

‘Sam Community’ – soon to be released, taps into the knowledge and experience of a global community of business travellers, serving up user-generated tips and advice based on a traveller’s location or when they ask Sam for assistance or inspiration.

FCM Travel Solutions general manager Melissa Elf said the tips and advice that would be available through the ‘Community’ function were provided by business travellers for business travellers.

“Sam Community acutely focuses on the experience of the traveller and how to enhance that traveller’s situation then and there. By providing locally relevant and personalised advice that’s consistently up to date, the entire traveller experience is going to be safer, easier and more enjoyable,” said Mrs Elf.

As well as ‘Sam Community’, the FCTG team will also be showcasing other new Sam functions that are coming soon including:

Sam for Travel Bookers:Sam will ensure Travel Bookers are aware of potential issues impacting their traveller(s) and prompt appropriate actions including booking changes and communication with the traveller to ensure their wellbeing.

Enhanced traveller safety features:Sam will soon recognise the user’s location via a blend of itinerary information and GPS and match this to any critical incidents, triggering real time relevant alerts with an ability to respond with appropriate action for the individual traveller.

Deeper integration:Sam currently integrates with many leading service providers including Uber, Lyft and Certify, and is in the process of growing its integration with global travel suppliers.

Content marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO) go hand in hand, though they’re often viewed as being separate disciplines.

For the best results in a modern marketing campaign, they’re best used together – with one feeding the other to get amplified results. SEO expert Marcus Miller has outlined some useful steps to bring it all together.

First, a quick reminder of what content marketing and SEO are.

According to the Content Marketing Institute: “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

For most businesses, the content they promote usually provides some advice, insight or attempts to solve problems that your customers and target audience usually face.

SEO stands for “search engine optimisation.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.

It’s important to rank highly on the big commercial terms, but this is very competitive territory for most SMEs.

How to get your content marketing found on Google

The two main options are to 1. Get your content published on a highly authoritative website where the content will automatically rank well; 2. Increase the authority of your own website and at the same time your published content.

Option 1 is great if you can achieve it by coming up with an informative and well-researched article and getting it published on a highly relevant site.

Option 2 can be more difficult as your site isn’t likely to rank as highly as an established site that has prominence in its space. So, to counter that you need to have your SEO basics up to speed for your own content. Building domain authority for your overall site is crucial, then promoting your articles individually to secure page authority.

Both options are useful. Effective SEO can help achieve you being in front of potential customers without paying per click.

Miller believes that a best approach is to identify well-linked content in your sector, and then create an improved version of that content.

His simple strategy then to drive more traffic to the content on your own site is:

1. Create great content

2. Promote that content with:

outreach

digital PR

guest blogging.

To ensure you improve your visibility in organic search and rank higher in Google, Miller has listed 5 Easy wins for 2018 in SEO.

1. Research and Use Relevant Keywords

2. Optimise Page Titles & Meta Descriptions

3. Optimise Page Content

4. Optimise Your Business Around the Web

5. Build Relevant Links.

Another tip is to register your site with Moz or Google Search Console where there are various tools and reports to improve your rankings in search results.

The generational make-up of corporate travellers is evolving, but some of their interaction patterns might not be changing as quickly as expected.

FCM Travel Solutions’ 2017 multinational survey of 6,000 of the company’s top travellers spanning 66 countries had its first year where those aged under 39 years outweighed those aged 50 and over. The age bracket 40-49 remains significantly highest in number.

What does this mean for a travel management company like FCM?

“We are investing heavily in technology and product integration to align with growing demand but in our experience corporate travellers certainly still want to talk to people for assistance and complex bookings,” FCM Travel Solutions’ Managing Director Marcus Eklund said.

“High service will not give way to an offering solely focused on technology, it will run concurrently.”

FCM’s findings show that whilst a large proportion of travellers are satisfied with the broad offering there are key areas where travellers would like to see improvements in corporate travel.

Reducing the cost of travelling is always a key concern, along with better airline seating choices and the user friendliness of online booking tools.

Marcus Eklund said: “Driving travel policy is still a significant factor for most, along with the online booking tool settings that go with it, but we are seeing more requests for a less restricted travel search configuration. We’re seeing a generally higher tolerance by our corporate clients of this approach.

“Receiving a 95 per cent traveller satisfaction rate was pleasing but you need to keep listening to all travellers, not become complacent and understand what makes up the other five per cent.”

Some markets specifically have more challenges regarding the online experience mostly reflecting more complex markets, specifically Europe with the reliance on rail and extreme low-cost flight competition.

Another common area for improvement in addition to flight search options was seating selection which was mentioned regularly in survey feedback. Additional ancillary options will likely be a welcome change for the corporate traveller.

“With the New Distribution Capability program entering the market, along with increasing platform integration it will not only change the landscape of ancillary services but enhance the traveller experience in new ways,” Mr Eklund said.

“We will move into a much more connected era for the travel manager, and in addition offer new communication channels and ways to interact and support the traveller. Very exciting times are ahead.”

Facebook has announced changes to its news feed flagged last year which will have the effect of prioritising posts from friends and video content over posts from media outlets and businesses.

For news outlets and pages this will change the likelihood of their posts appearing in your news feed.

Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s head of News Feed wrote in a post that Facebook was built to bring people closer together and build relationships

He wrote: “With this update, we will also prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people. To do this, we will predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about, and show these posts higher in feed. These are posts that inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to – whether that’s a post from a friend seeking advice, a friend asking for recommendations for a trip, or a news article or video prompting lots of discussion. We will also prioritize posts from friends and family over public content…”

“Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.”

According to Mosseri page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in News Feed. For example, live videos often lead to discussion among viewers on Facebook – in fact, live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos. Many creators who post videos on Facebook prompt discussion among their followers, as do posts from celebrities. In Groups, people often interact around public content. Local businesses connect with their communities by posting relevant updates and creating events. And news can help start conversations on important issues.

If you still want to see all content from a favourite page or business, you will still be able to; you’ll need to change the appropriate preference setting to see posts from your favourite pages.

This change is a sure-fire reminder that Facebook is there to make money and not just to give a business or publisher a free platform to promote itself and drive traffic. Organic reach will continue to decline for them and necessitate a rethink on the sort of content they provide and the level of sponsorship they will need or future posts.

If you’re a brand and can generate engagement, discussion and sharing then you may still be able to generate organic reach. However, all brands will need to rethink their content marketing strategies and decide how important Facebook is to their marketing programs.

Facebook has introduced these sorts of changes before and now it’s up to users and advertisers to react and respond.

Hopefully one meaningful change to news feed will be the penalising of publishers who seem to thrive on clickbait-type articles and headlines. We’re looking at you, Fox Sports!

An England Ashes cricket tour to Australia is always one of the most highly anticipated sporting visits to this country.

The return of the English Men’s and Women’s cricket teams for their respective Ashes campaigns is the culmination of months of planning to ensure both series are a success on the field for players, spectators and for all stakeholders.

Planning commenced for the 2017-18 season some years in advance by Cricket Australia as the host nation with the England and Wales Cricket Board; and travel, transport and accommodation by sports and entertainment travel company Stage and Screen Travel Services.

With the England squads touring in Australia from October to February The Ashes series will ensure a highly attended summer of international cricket in Australia.

Tiziano Galipo, General Manager Stage and Screen Travel Services said, ”The Ashes is a long and complex tour to arrange and requires close cooperation between all parties involved.

“We started making bookings eight months ago as soon as the touring calendar was set and then look at fine tuning requirements as the tour unfolds.”

Stage and Screen are required to book over 8,800 hotel room nights across 12 different hotels with over 1,100 bags of luggage required to be transported. Transport arrangements include booking 36 internal flights and 270 vans, cars and coaches to move the teams and support staff around the country.

Additionally, the teams will use over 37 dozen cricket balls for training on top of the match balls.

The five-match Magellan Ashes Test Series commenced on 23rd November 2017 in Brisbane and is followed by five Gillette One Day Internationals and a Twenty20 Trans-Tasman Tri-Series involving New Zealand.

The Commonwealth Bank Women’s Ashes Series has been played in Brisbane, Coffs Harbour, Canberra and North Sydney from 22nd October to 21st November 2017.

About Stage and Screen Travel ServicesStage and Screen is Australia’s leading entertainment and sports travel company, widely respected for its people, credibility and discretion. The company lives and breathe sports and entertainment. Its long-standing client relationships have provided expert insider knowledge. Matching its Travel Managers with its clients, Stage and Screen delivers extraordinary travel experiences for Sport | Music, Touring & Arts | TV & Production | Film | Creative Industries.